


look out (look out)

by pinkejessman



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Gen, poppin the biggest bottles tonight lmao, season 12 is about happy boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 02:25:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9636701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkejessman/pseuds/pinkejessman
Summary: He thinks he's out now.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm "the guy" actually who wrote the reaction stuff to the LAST time he came out, so I figured, why not write a second one at two in the morning while I'm crying over my gay son? 
> 
> Title isn't from Frank fucking Reynolds, but from AJJ's Personal Space Invader, which is honestly a Mac Feel.

1.

 

He goes home and crashes across the entire bed, ‘cuz it’s been a long couple of days.

2.

Charlie laughs for an hour about the fourteen dollars he has left. Dennis hands it to him and he looks at it, counts it a few times. No more Rich Gay Mac. It doesn’t feel like a waste, he’s still feeling good right now, so good, but that was a lot of money. He could have done some serious shit with that money.

“That’s a dick move, Frank,” he says, pocketing the cash and snagging a beer from behind the bar. “You owe me big time.”

“I don’t owe you shit,” he says. “I gave up 5,000 so you could go fuck dudes.”

“Not what happened, dude,” Charlie says, and Mac gestures at him.

“Not what happened,” he repeats. “Pretty sure you gave me 5,000 in hate crime reparations.” He’s still thinking about what the arbitrator said. It’s an actual real hate crime, because he’s gay, and Frank’s an asshole. He’s taking swigs from his beer but he’s gay while he’s doing it. Is everything he does now gay automatically?

“Not that I’m not thrilled you’re an official cocksucker,” Dee says, snickering because she thinks this is a clever callback to something, “but I told you all that I might be dying, and that’s new information. Can we focus on that for two seconds?”

“No! That’s not what happened! Why’re we smoking, if it’s not, like, to save your life?” Charlie’s actually got a couple butts on the bar in front of him, smearing the ash around his fingers. “I thought that’s what that was.”

“It’s- Charlie,” she starts, and Mac thinks about the fourteen dollars in his pocket. It was worth it. The gang sucks. Everything’s normal.

3.

Maybe everything shouldn’t be normal? It feels like something he should be thinking about more, performative sexuality and all the shit he found when he was looking up definitions and then some other things after that because, in retrospect, he’s gay. Is four days long enough to be retrospective?

The gang still hasn’t mentioned it. He’s still in the bed with Dennis and Dee and Old Black Man because his short lived plans to get their apartment back obviously fell through, and Dennis is still scoffing at him when he does his push ups in the living room, and all the normal stuff is still happening, but. Church is tomorrow, and that’s a thing that’s gonna tear this whole “normal” in half.

Is it still normal? Is Mac still normal? He’s not even sure he’s still himself. Something broke- something didn’t break- something in him has been put together differently, just rearranged, and now he can’t tell what’s really a part of him.

He hasn’t been back to the Gay Cruise church since almost going to hell, which is another thing he has to worry about now, so all he’s really going off of is the stuff those guys told him. He doesn’t feel like his old church is gonna have those same ideas. His old church is the place he learned about how messed up he is inside, and he doesn’t want to go back to that, but? 

He leaves on Sunday morning and doesn’t look at Dennis or Dee. He’s never scheduled for Sunday mornings, they can’t even sell booze so it’s all just yelling and Charlie Work and all this stuff he doesn’t want to think about right now because it was a long week, okay. He sits through the service and goes to his knees, stands up, fumbles on the Latin but no more than usual.

Mac opens his mouth and takes communion. He confesses:

Forgive me Father:

I have lied I have taken Your name in vain I have been greedy I have been angry and I’ve been drunk on wine and other things like Jesus said not to get. 

If he starts feeling the guilt of hiding it, it’ll mean something. He’ll say it next time once he’s decided, or he won’t, but. This isn’t going to be what it was. He’s not going to shut his eyes and rest his head on the confessional wall while he breathes out thoughts he’d been trying to avoid.

4.

Charlie bashed his bike to pieces with the spiked rat stick. 

Mac doesn’t know what to do with that.

Fourteen dollars wasn’t going to do much for it, he guesses.

.  
5.

Mac lets his eyes drift to men now, and it doesn’t feel like anything big after a while. He still gets a little panicky when someone catches him looking, but it’s okay, and more than once a guy has smiled right at him when he does it. 

“Hey. Sweet Dee,” he says. “Bet you all our tips I’ll bring in more tonight.” He scans the crowd, usual college students and old guys who are already wasted and a few of the kind of women who come here. He figures they’re not that hot, but he can’t really tell, now that he’s stopped making himself think about it.

She checks her makeup and they shake on it. Dennis watches from the doorway, checking IDs, as Mac messes with his hair and leans against the bar to show off his arms. He knows what he’s doing, he’s remembering when Dennis did the same thing with tight jeans and a tight tank top, but that was this weird peacocking thing no one’s really figured out. Mac smiles when he cracks open beers and slides them to college boys, the girls all think he’s cute and nonthreatening, which, whatever, he’s the most badass person in the place, and he walks away with Dee absolutely furious.

He’s kind of good at this. It’s weird. It’s getting to be normal, a little at a time, and he’s pretty happy with it. There’s still something small inside him, something that makes him feel all soft and open when he pokes at it with his brain, and it sounds a lot like him saying “it feels pretty good” when he was just figuring out what everything was going to mean.

He doesn’t regret anything yet. He regrets a couple things, like not just saying it right off the bat and punching Frank in the face, and all the stuff he’s ever done that made the gang look at him like that, but other than that, it’s okay.

6.

It’s not like it’s his first experience with a guy; there’s been drunken indiscretions with random guys from random places, the sloppy kisses he and Dennis swapped one day when Dennis was at college and Mac was a lonely drug dealer and they were high on his supply. He got to third base under the bleachers of all-boys Catholic school, and Saint Patrick’s day isn’t really a party unless you come back glittery from good ol’ fashioned grinding. But it’s the first one where he wasn’t a mess the whole time, feeling like he was shaking apart at the seams at every moment of it.

It doesn’t go much further than the kiss. He’s pretty sure he’s good at this, way better than he was with girls, if only because it’s easier for him to enjoy it, but this isn’t really his scene. The throbbing lights and techno bring back some weird memories, not all bad, but this isn’t really who he is. He’s not that good at dancing but it doesn’t matter when he’s pressed against some guy and their mouths are doing most of the moving and the rest is just enthusiasm and a hand sliding under his shirt.

When he breaks it off to breathe, he’s smiling, their lips still pressed together. It’s just some guy, some guy who came in and got one of the drinks that rides the edge between boring and just packed with fruit and sugar, some guy in a vintage Karate Kid tee shirt. Mac fished out Frank’s card- he’s getting his 10,000, one drink at a time- and they talked for about five minutes before it stopped being a big deal.

It could probably go farther, and if he’s throwing himself into this he’s going to do it full force, but he doesn’t feel like going back to some guy’s apartment and having to explain what’s new to him and what he wants and all that, sitting on the edge of the bed while some guy who’s been out for ten years laughs at him.

Dude’s a good kisser, though, tongue and teeth and the last of that drink.

7.

Dennis is more into the stripper thing than he is. And Mac’s pretty into it.

8.

It just becomes part of him. It was always part of him, but it’s crossed the line from the stuff he ignores, like the alcoholism and the dad that hates him thing all the way to the side of stuff he likes, like whenever he gets to show off his strength and skills in a scheme and it works and everything thinks he’s cool-

It’s weird to think of it as a part of him. Here’s Mac: here’s the part that’s in an argument about if Holland Oates and Simon Garfunkle will ever collaborate (“Charlie, you moron, they’d never want to work together, they’re already making millions and millionaires never wanna deal with other rich people-” “What do you know about being rich, asshole?”), here’s the part that had dry cereal and a shot of tequila for breakfast ‘cuz someone forgot milk and no one would admit it so they all went down like men.

Dee actually said that, “We all go down like men,” and waggled her eyebrows him like she’s the funniest thing, making these kind of jokes. It’s not the worst one, actually. They’re getting better than they were.

There’s the part of him that’s all these different things and there’s the part of him that’s gay and there’s the part of him that’s Mac, no last name, all these things he’s made himself. All these things that made him, he guesses. This has been a long time coming.

It was always part of him, maybe? That’s what he said, and he didn’t think he meant it but when he said it it hurt with how true it was and how tiny it made him; Charlie’s made some comments about their childhood that make it seem like this was an inevitable place he’d come to. They’d had their pizza and beer sleepover when Frank was out bangin’ whores and Mac figured a bed with two people was better than four. And Charlie just gets drunk and he gets awesome when he’s drunk, and they’re normal and Charlie falls asleep mid sentence, and they’re sharing the bed like they have since they were little and it doesn’t matter because this is always who he’s been.

“You’re like, my best friend, dude,” Charlie slurs, and Mac’s pretty wasted too. “Like, man, it’s all good, y’know? ‘ts good. You’re a good dude sometimes.” He tries to pat Mac on the shoulder, falls over, and giggles to himself.

And Mac’s laughing. “It’s the same, dude,” he tries to explain, but he’s still figuring out the words and it’s hard enough when he’s sober and putting effort into it, so he just says it again: “I’m the same.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Charlie says. “I know you. You’re such a dick.”

And they’re laughing.

9.

He spends his fourteen dollars on five new two dollar scratchers, the extra on a pack of smokes, and dumps the change in the tip jar. It just occurred to him that maybe the winning money can get another winning ticket, and the whole thing worked out pretty well the last time.

Dennis and Frank each win five bucks and the rest of them get nothing. Mac steals Frank’s ticket out of his pocket when he’s not looking.

 

10.

He and Dennis sneak off to smoke because if Dee and Charlie can have their own thing, so can they, and Mac didn’t have a real plan when he bought the pack but it had just seemed important. It’s only after that he realizes it’s the kind that Dennis likes when he’s nervous and emotional, so he feels weird handing them over. Dennis lights his off the one Mac already has burning in his mouth, and it’s not weird. Stuff isn’t weird anymore.

“I don’t hate you,” Dennis says. “Not like that. I don’t do this kind of thing.”

Mac thinks he knows what kind of thing Dennis is talking about.

“Relax, dude,” he says. “Your emotions aren’t part of this. It’s about me. I’m fine.”

(“Jesus Christ,” Dennis groans. “It’s still about you, somehow.”

“Well, God, Dennis, don’t start in with this shit if you don’t want me to talk about it.”

“Go fuck yourself.” He mimes riding a bicycle and chokes on his smoke when Mac hits him, not too hard. This is what normal feels like.)

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this disaster you can check out more of my writing (or consider commissioning me for more of Happy Out Gay Boys) on twitter @noajosef
> 
> fuck i love mac


End file.
